Why is sex better in hotel rooms?

There's even science that says so

When the first Standard hotel in New York opened nine years ago, it was lagging behind schedule. The owners bowed to pressure, though, and accepted guests while construction continued. “We’ll put up with your banging, if you’ll put up with ours,” ran one of its provocative ads, plastered on sidewalks around downtown. The hotel encouraged exhibitionists to make the most of rooms tailor-made for their tastes, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the strolling pedestrians of the High Line. When the New York Post ran a pearl-clutching exposé management claimed it discouraged such raunchy behavior—only for several staffers to tell an undercover reporter the exact opposite.

Likewise, the recently opened Public on New York’s Lower East Side has created a sense of dirty déjà vu with its floor-to-ceiling windows and flabbergasted neighbours. Yet somehow such antics seem fitting—after all, a hotel is synonymous with naughtiness and permission to misbehave. Even though we check in with copious ID, and are near constantly under close circuit camera surveillance, we feel liberated from social norms and niceties when we sleep (or at least spend time) at a hotel. We’re unfettered from constraints that steer our behaviour day to day, whether minor (insouciantly leaving a bed unmade) or major (stuffing some ‘souvenirs’ from the stay into a suitcase).

The associations are endless. A hotel is the first place honeymooning couples spend the night together. When Modern Family‘s Phil and Claire Dunphy want a break from their kids, they book into a hotel for some slapstick role-play. The minibar, once stuffed with snacks and booze, now often features a so-called intimacy kit (fluffy handcuffs, anyone?), while in-room TVs were once the only way to discreetly access X-rated movies. “When I worked the late shift, around 11 p.m., people would call and say, ‘I’m having trouble with my TV. Can you make sure I’m not charged for the movie?’ Nobody realizes you can log into the Lodgenet system and check—yes, they watched Naked Cheerleaders from Las Vegas for 14 minutes,” says Michael Fazio, author of Concierge Confidential, a rollicking memoir about his almost decade-long stint as a concierge at a NYC luxury hotel, with a laugh. “It was almost a nightly occurrence.”

The link between hotels and sex was baked in from the beginning. Inns and lodges have existed from early human times, but the modern idea of a hotel began in London, according to Andrew K. Sandoval-Strausz’s book Hotel: An American History. In the early 18th century, groups of French emigrés bought up rundown, high-end houses in the formerly ritzy Covent Garden area and ran them as guest accommodations; those once-grand piles earned the name hotel, since they resembled the mansions of noblemen back home in France. Covent Garden, of course, was London’s entertainment district, and much of that merriment involved prostitution, and the distinction between a hotel and a brothel was sometimes tricky to ascertain back then, much as it is now—see today’s hourly hotels, aimed solely at extramarital assignations of all kinds, like Japan’s love hotels, Guatemala’s ‘auto hotels,’ or Brazil’s motels, with their drive-in garages that allow total anonymity to guests. The US startup Hotels By Day suggests its business model, selling rooms by the hour rather than overnight, depends on business travellers seeking a quiet place to work (though explicit uses are more implicit).

The sexy side to an overnight stay is obvious to couples: complete liberation from the everyday, whether chores or children

The sexy side to an overnight stay is obvious to couples: complete liberation from the everyday, whether chores or children

The sexy side to an overnight stay is obvious to couples: complete liberation from the everyday, whether chores or children. With that liberation comes libido, according to sex coach Xanet Pailet of The Power of the Pleasure. “Spending a night in a hotel allows us to escape from all of the stress and the daily grind and gives us permission to allow ourselves to relax and be pampered,” she says. “When you’re not worried about the kids barging in and the urgent email you need to return, you can relax and be really present with your partner. You can also take your time, which is a luxury for most couples.” There’s the dual appeal of anonymity and exhibitionism: Like the Dunphys, you can role-play and re-imagine your relationship without anyone overhearing.

The hotel is an obligation-free zone: Romp in the bath and you don’t have to worry about cleaning it afterwards—housekeeping will see to that by folding the towels, making the bed, and handling everything mundane that might stymie sexual moments in everyday life; hang the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door and you truly will be left alone. The novelty of a hotel room helps create sparks, too. “By our nature, human beings are always searching for something new: the newest app, newest book, newest trend. Having sex in the same bedroom, on the same bed, where the kids and the dogs spend time, is simply not sexy after a while,” says Pailet. Certainly, novelty is a proven aphrodisiac: Research shows it nudges our brains to produce dopamine, that complicated hormone that acts like feel-good juice on the pleasure and reward centres.

Relationship therapist Marissa Nelson believes so strongly in the healing power of vacation sex that she created an entire business around it: IntimacyMoons. Several years ago, Nelson noticed a recurring theme among many clients in troubled marriages. Some would take trips to mull whether to divorce or stay together; those who did go away to a hotel usually opted to remain married, raving about reconnecting via the great sex they’d enjoyed on the trip. In response, Nelson created her startup, which whisks a small group of couples away to the Crane hotel in Barbados for a few days. The vacation combines private couples’ therapy sessions with a chance for participants to unwind (rates start at $2,500 per couple). “Escape breeds vibrancy and aliveness,” she says. “People leave their everyday environment and give themselves permission to let go, to open themselves up to pleasure and intimacy. One client, who came to me and hadn’t had sex [with her husband] in three years, [said they] arrived in the hotel room, and went skinny dipping in the pool.”

It’s a reminder that at the root of hotels’ appeal isn’t just sex, but romance, as former concierge Michael Fazio says. “It was so common for a gentleman to say, ‘While we’re at dinner, could you come into the room and put petals all over the bed?’” he recalls. “We used to keep rose petals in stock at our desks.”